The U.S. Department of Justice faced criticism Wednesday after releasing documents related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that revealed nude photos, names and personal information of victims. Despite attempts to censor sensitive data, errors in the process allowed private identities and data to become visible, prompting calls for stricter oversight.

First modification: 02/05/2026 - 10:47

Nude photos. Names and faces of victims of sexual abuse. Bank account and Social Security numbers at sight. All of this appeared in the massive trove of documents released Friday by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of its effort to comply with a law requiring it to open its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein.

That law was intended to preserve important privacy protections for Epstein's victims. Their names had to appear crossed out on the documents. Their faces and bodies had to be hidden in the photos.

However, errors have been frequent. A review by The Associated Press and other media outlets has found countless examples of sloppy, inconsistent or non-existent censorship that has revealed sensitive private information.

A photo of a young woman who was a minor when she was hired to give Epstein sexualized massages in Florida appeared in a chart of his alleged victims. Police reports with the names of several of his victims—including some who have never been publicly identified—were published without any censorship.

Despite the Justice Department's efforts to correct the oversights, a selfie taken by a naked woman in a bathroom and another of a topless woman, both with her face fully visible, remained available on the site as of Wednesday night.

Some whistleblowers and their lawyers asked this week that the Justice Department take down the site and appoint an independent monitor to prevent new errors.

A judge had scheduled a hearing for Wednesday in New York on the matter, but canceled it after one of the victims' attorneys cited progress in resolving the issues. However, that lawyer, Brittany Henderson, said they were still evaluating "all possible avenues of recourse" to address the "permanent and irreparable" harm caused to some women.

"The ruling here is not merely technical," he said in a statement Wednesday. "It is a failure to protect human beings whom our government promised to protect. Until every document is properly redacted, that failure continues."

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Annie Farmer, who said she was 16 when she was sexually assaulted by Epstein and his confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, claimed that although her name had previously been public, other information she would prefer to keep private — such as her date of birth and phone number — was wrongly revealed in the documents.

"At this point, I'm mostly angry about the way it all played out," she told NBC News. "The fact that it was done in such a careless way, putting people at risk, is really terrifying."

The Justice Department has attributed the problems to technical or human error and said it has removed many of the problematic materials and is working to republish properly redacted versions.

The task of reviewing and crossing out millions of pages of records was accomplished in a compressed time frame. President Donald Trump signed the law requiring the release of the documents on November 19. That law gave the Justice Department just 30 days to release the files. He missed the deadline, in part because he said he needed more time to comply with privacy protections.

Hundreds of lawyers were pulled from their regular duties — including overseeing criminal cases — to try to complete the document review, to the point that at least one judge in New York complained that it was delaying other matters.

The database, posted on the Justice Department's website, represents the largest disclosure of files to date in the years-long investigations into Epstein, who committed suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

Read alsoEpstein Files: Gates claims she only attended dinners with the pedophile, while Trump asks to turn the page

They have also found numerous cases of excessive censorship.

In a news clipping included in the file, the Justice Department apparently crossed out the name “Joseph” from a caption describing a nativity scene at a California church. “A nativity scene that represents Jesus, Mary and (Censored),” it said.

In an email posted in the archives, a dog's name appeared to have been redacted: "I spent an hour walking (redacted) and then another hour bathing her, blow-drying her, and brushing her. I hope she smells better!" the message said.

The Justice Department said staff in charge of preparing the files for release were instructed to limit redactions only to information related to victims and their families, although many other people's names, including lawyers and public figures, were blacked out in many documents.

The Justice Department said its intention was to censor any part of a photo that showed nudity and any image of women that might show a victim.

In some photos reviewed by the AP, those censorships did hide the women's faces, but they left much of their bare skin exposed in a way that was likely to be equally embarrassing. The images showed identifiable women trying on clothes in store fitting rooms or lounging in swimsuits.

A set of more than 100 images of a young woman was almost completely censored, except for the last image, which revealed her face completely.

This article is an adaptation of its original in English

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